operarii
Operarii is a Latin noun meaning “workers” or “laborers,” and is the plural of operarius. It is derived from the verb operari, to work, with the root opus meaning work. In classical Latin, operarius referred to a person who performed manual labor, including artisans, craftsmen, agricultural workers, miners, builders, and other hands engaged in a task. The term could denote free laborers as well as slaves or dependents doing productive work, depending on the context, and it appears in inscriptions and prose describing people employed in various trades.
In the Roman world, operarii formed part of a broader social taxonomy of labor that distinguished types
During the Middle Ages and in later Latin, operarius continued to describe lay workers or functionaries attached
The term has descendants in modern Romance languages, such as Italian operai and Spanish operarios, which retain